Twenty Years of Yo! MTV Raps!!!

by Travis on April 19, 2008

(Before we start off, gotta give it up to El Gringo Colombiano for giving me the idea for the quarterly post, gotta give credit where credit is due….)

It’s been TWENTY years since the first episode of Yo! MTV Raps. I personally think Yo! is responsible for hip hop being the global force that it is. The show is legendary, a one of a kind, event that will forever be seen as one of the best things to ever happen to hip hop culture. It was the most important media vehicle that the music has ever witnessed. The effect it had on just me is immeasurable. It is single handedly responsible for hip hop being the major part of my life that it is still, twenty years after it first appeared. The summer of 1988, I was getting ready to start my sophomore year in high school. I had already gotten into hip hop, thanks to Run DMC (another group near and dear to my heart), and already had tapes from the Beastie Boys, LA Dream Team, Whodini, Fat Boys, UTFO, and LL Cool J, but it would be that first episode of Yo! MTV Raps that would launch me into a whole other world when it came to hip hop music. The first episode actually aired while I was on a family vacation, but I made damn sure that I set the VCR to tape the episode. I watched it everyday for the next month until MTV started and by the end of that year, I had every artist that appeared on that debut episode.

The next seven years, it wouldn’t matter what time it came on, I made sure if I didn’t watch in person, that it was taped. The Today shows, the Saturday morning shows, they all got put on a VHS tape. I had a gang of tapes, most of which have been lost or broken, but I still have a few that have survived. The show introduced me to so many different artists that as a kid in a ho-dunk town, I probably would have never known.The show is so important to me on so many levels, so I have to point out that MTV is celebrating Yo’s Twentieth Anniversary. I’m kind of disappointed more isn’t being made out of this. I don’t watch MTV anymore, so I don’t know if they’ve been advertising this or not but I haven’t really read much about it anywhere else. I figured I’d link up some of the highlights that MTV has posted up on MTV.com. God forbid they actually show this on MTV….

IF ANYONE HAS THAT FIRST EPISODE TAPED AND CAN POST IT OR CONVERT IT, PLEASE CONTACT ME!!!